Ben Chou gave up on his land line a year ago, opting instead to take all calls on his cell phone.
The convenience is enticing and the pocket-size phone provides all the features that would rack up extra charges on a traditional phone.
“It’s just a lot easier to have a cell phone,” said Chou, 20, who will start classes at Peninsula College this fall
He’s one of a growing number of people on the North Olympic Peninsula and around the country who are cutting the cord on land lines and embracing the wireless trend.
As many as 7.5 million Americans, led by students, recent graduates and young professionals, rely strictly on their cells.
“A lot of people do cancel their home phones and use cell phones, only because the price is better,” said Tessa Crane, a cellular salesperson at Pacific Office Equipment in Port Angeles.
Cell phones already comprise about 43 percent of all U.S. phones, up from 37 percent in 2000, according to the International Telecommunication Union.
And as more people go wireless, the number of U.S. land line phones has dropped by more than 5 million, or about 3 percent, in the last three years, the Federal Communications Commission reported in June.
“Certainly, a lot more people today than a year ago, five years ago, have wireless phones,” said Michael Dunne, a spokesman for Qwest Communications International, which provides phone service to most of the North Olympic Peninsula. Their reasons are less for convenience and more for necessity, he said.
More customers are purchasing cell phones rather than installing second land lines in their homes for business or as “teenager lines,” Dunne said.
Wireless phones do compete with land lines, but Qwest is seeing only “a small minority of people who have ‘cut the cord,”‘ he said.
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The rest of the story appears in Sunday’s Peninsula Daily News.